July 14, 2014

One Little Thing that Makes a BIG Difference in the Bathroom

A few years ago, I was preparing to travel to meet friends for a retreat, and in our preparation for our weekend, we talked about some of the things that made us nervous about filling a house for around-the-clock togetherness.

We laughed about bizarre sleep practices and weird food preferences and the need to crawl off to a corner for a few minutes of solitude -- all the things you might expect from a group of women who would be sharing close quarters for a few days. Given my tendency to overshare on the bathroom issues, you are probably not at all surprised to know that I told the group that my number one worry had to do with number two.

It's true. For years and years, I've had high anxiety about bathroom smells - whether I was staying in the homes of family members or spending nights in hotels with friends, I get overly preoccupied with how to handle bathroom business away from home.

For example, on a spiritual retreat I went on a few years ago, I got up half an hour earlier than anyone else and skipped the bathroom in the room I was staying in and snuck down the hall to the main restroom to get everything taken care of for the day. And years ago when I was teaching, I went to a professional conference and roomed with a colleague in a hotel. I brought a box of matches in my luggage so I could be prepared to strike one and partially eliminate offensive odors when the time came.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I am a chronic over-sharer, yes, but also so you can know the depths to which I am deeply serious about bathroom smell management.

So for the retreat with friends I told you about, one lovely person kindly provided me with a spray bottle of an essential oil blend that you spray in the water of the toilet bowl before you did your daily. And actually, it worked great with the only downside being that anyone who used the bathroom after you would be confronted with the scent of essential oils whether they liked it or not!

Fast forward to a few days ago when my big box of all-natural cleaning goodness arrived from Freshana. (Although they are sponsoring SortaCrunchy this summer, Freshana didn't provide products for me to review; instead, I chose to order them myself so I could have the same customer experience that you'll have when you order for them.)

When I placed my order, I threw in a can of their Airia air purifying spray at the last minute. I generally hate air sprays - the scents they use to cover up bad odors generally make me nauseated or give me a headache. As a highly sensitive person, I am uber-picky about how our house smells, and I just never have been able to find an air freshener that I didn't absolutely hate.

But Freshana promises that their 100% natural products are unscented, and since they offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all of their products, I decided to take a chance on the Airia spray.

As luck would have it, not long after the girls and I dug into our box of Freshana, one of the boys obliged us with a massive poopy diaper. AJ is mildly obsessed with anything that can be sprayed, so she thought to grab the Airia and went to town spraying down the living room where the offending diaper and the offender were being changed.

Yep, she sprayed the room down right where one of my toddlers was laying on the floor. I would never let her do that with a conventional air freshener spray. A certain well-known Big Name air freshening spray can cheekily replace the word "cleaning" with "health-ing" all they want, but there is NO WAY I am filling the air of my home with alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride and other toxic stuff in that lemon-fresh can.

We were all truly amazed with the results. Did it get rid of toddler diaper stink? Yep. INSTANTLY. Did it leave behind a noxious scent? Not even a little bit.

So what DOES it smell like?

I don't know how they did this and I don't know what else to say except it smells like fresh air. FRESH AIR. Isn't that crazy-amazing?

Next we put it to the test in the bathroom. With two adults and two elementary kids in the house, it wasn't long before we all got a chance to experiment with its odor-clearing powers. I am here to testify that it has not yet met a bathroom smell that it couldn't tackle!

Airia is the one little thing you want to keep in your bathroom (well, other places around the house, too, which I fully intend to explore later) because it gets rid of all the incriminating evidence of the dirty work without leaving behind a trace of anything at all happening in there. Just the smell of fresh air. FRESH AIR. And don't forget about the part where you can spray it around your children without a care in the world about what they are actually breathing in.

Okay, so I am nearing 1000 words on an air cleaning spray, and yes, that is ridiculous. But again, for someone who has major bathroom smell, uh, issues, this discovery really, truly is a BIG DEAL.

If you want to make your bathroom a bit safer for poop-smell-phobes by using a spray that is safe for the smell-sensitive (and for respiratory systems everywhere!), go on ahead and see what I mean.

Freshana has created a 20% off discount EXCLUSIVELY for you. Use code "SortaCrunchy" to get your discount on your entire order!

Thanks for letting me take a few minutes to share the Airia-love with you. Here's to happy noses all around!

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One Little Thing that Makes a BIG Difference in the Bathroom

A few years ago, I was preparing to travel to meet friends for a retreat, and in our preparation for our weekend, we talked about some of the things that made us nervous about filling a house for around-the-clock togetherness.

We laughed about bizarre sleep practices and weird food preferences and the need to crawl off to a corner for a few minutes of solitude -- all the things you might expect from a group of women who would be sharing close quarters for a few days. Given my tendency to overshare on the bathroom issues, you are probably not at all surprised to know that I told the group that my number one worry had to do with number two.

It's true. For years and years, I've had high anxiety about bathroom smells - whether I was staying in the homes of family members or spending nights in hotels with friends, I get overly preoccupied with how to handle bathroom business away from home.

For example, on a spiritual retreat I went on a few years ago, I got up half an hour earlier than anyone else and skipped the bathroom in the room I was staying in and snuck down the hall to the main restroom to get everything taken care of for the day. And years ago when I was teaching, I went to a professional conference and roomed with a colleague in a hotel. I brought a box of matches in my luggage so I could be prepared to strike one and partially eliminate offensive odors when the time came.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I am a chronic over-sharer, yes, but also so you can know the depths to which I am deeply serious about bathroom smell management.

So for the retreat with friends I told you about, one lovely person kindly provided me with a spray bottle of an essential oil blend that you spray in the water of the toilet bowl before you did your daily. And actually, it worked great with the only downside being that anyone who used the bathroom after you would be confronted with the scent of essential oils whether they liked it or not!

Fast forward to a few days ago when my big box of all-natural cleaning goodness arrived from Freshana. (Although they are sponsoring SortaCrunchy this summer, Freshana didn't provide products for me to review; instead, I chose to order them myself so I could have the same customer experience that you'll have when you order for them.)

When I placed my order, I threw in a can of their Airia air purifying spray at the last minute. I generally hate air sprays - the scents they use to cover up bad odors generally make me nauseated or give me a headache. As a highly sensitive person, I am uber-picky about how our house smells, and I just never have been able to find an air freshener that I didn't absolutely hate.

But Freshana promises that their 100% natural products are unscented, and since they offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all of their products, I decided to take a chance on the Airia spray.

As luck would have it, not long after the girls and I dug into our box of Freshana, one of the boys obliged us with a massive poopy diaper. AJ is mildly obsessed with anything that can be sprayed, so she thought to grab the Airia and went to town spraying down the living room where the offending diaper and the offender were being changed.

Yep, she sprayed the room down right where one of my toddlers was laying on the floor. I would never let her do that with a conventional air freshener spray. A certain well-known Big Name air freshening spray can cheekily replace the word "cleaning" with "health-ing" all they want, but there is NO WAY I am filling the air of my home with alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride and other toxic stuff in that lemon-fresh can.

We were all truly amazed with the results. Did it get rid of toddler diaper stink? Yep. INSTANTLY. Did it leave behind a noxious scent? Not even a little bit.

So what DOES it smell like?

I don't know how they did this and I don't know what else to say except it smells like fresh air. FRESH AIR. Isn't that crazy-amazing?

Next we put it to the test in the bathroom. With two adults and two elementary kids in the house, it wasn't long before we all got a chance to experiment with its odor-clearing powers. I am here to testify that it has not yet met a bathroom smell that it couldn't tackle!

Airia is the one little thing you want to keep in your bathroom (well, other places around the house, too, which I fully intend to explore later) because it gets rid of all the incriminating evidence of the dirty work without leaving behind a trace of anything at all happening in there. Just the smell of fresh air. FRESH AIR. And don't forget about the part where you can spray it around your children without a care in the world about what they are actually breathing in.

Okay, so I am nearing 1000 words on an air cleaning spray, and yes, that is ridiculous. But again, for someone who has major bathroom smell, uh, issues, this discovery really, truly is a BIG DEAL.

If you want to make your bathroom a bit safer for poop-smell-phobes by using a spray that is safe for the smell-sensitive (and for respiratory systems everywhere!), go on ahead and see what I mean.

Freshana has created a 20% off discount EXCLUSIVELY for you. Use code "SortaCrunchy" to get your discount on your entire order!

Thanks for letting me take a few minutes to share the Airia-love with you. Here's to happy noses all around!